New From Montana Rifle Company: Leupold Cascade Rifle Package

Kalispell, Mont. (November 2015) –Montana Rifle Company has partnered with Leupold & Stevens, Inc., to build the Cascade Extreme Rifle package, a limited edition hunting rifle designed for optimum performance in the most challenging of conditions . . .

The Cascade Extreme Rifle is based on the Montana Rifle Company’s Model 1999 stainless steel action, the same as in the X2 rifle, which was named a “Best of the Best” by Field & Stream magazine. Chambered in the versatile .300 Winchester Magnum, the Cascade Extreme is bedded in the company’s cutting-edge Montana X2 Carbon Fiber Reinforced Stock.

“The Cascade Extreme Rifle is designed to take on any environment and any hunt,” said Jeff Sipe, vice president of sales & marketing for Montana Rifle Company. “This limited edition rifle package features the most cutting-edge rifle technology and is built to perform when it counts most, on the hunt.”

The entire rifle is cerakoted in a Tungsten Grey undercoat, with a matte Cascade Green epoxy finish over the top. A newly designed Montana Flats Brake vents gas away from the shooter while delivering maximum recoil reduction. A 24-inch No. 2 contour barrel is completely hand-lapped and features a 1-10 twist.

Built around a completely trued action, the Cascade Extreme features an old style M70 trigger tuned to a crisp three pounds. The three-position wing safety also serves as a firing pin block safety, offering an additional safeguard when working through rough country. The Cascade Extreme Rifle offers controlled round feed with a large Mauser claw extractor and Mauser C-ring breech system. A dove-tailed lug and raceway system ensure smooth, reliable operation in hot, cold, dirty or wet conditions.

The X2 stock is filled with a fiberglass strand reinforced foam, to increase strength will mitigating recoil and saving weight. A Pachmyar recoil pad is attached to a 12-inch wood core, for rock-solid durability. Finished with a matte Cascade Green and Black Fleck epoxy finish, the Cascade Extreme Rifle is ready for any weather condition.

Limited to just 50 rifles, the Cascade Extreme package will feature a Leupold Custom Shop VX-6 3-18x44mm in Covert Green, with the FireDot WindPlex reticle and CDS-ZL locking adjustment. The VX-6 will also be limited to 50 units and will be individually numbered to match the rifle (i.e. 1 of 50), and each scope is serialized to match the rifle.

“MRC is honored and humbled to be working with Leupold on this project. When Marcus Leupold said ‘I can make a better scope’ he exhibited determination and ingenuity, creating the finest American-made riflescopes,” Sipe said. “It is those same characteristics that MRC founder Brian Sipe put into creating the Model 1999 Montana Action. Both men felt they could build a better product and that’s exactly what they did. Combining these two companies for the Cascade Extreme Rifle project is a win for hunters worldwide.”

For Leupold, the opportunity to contribute to the Cascade Extreme Rifle project was a perfect way for one American-based company of hunters to join forces and offer sportsmen and women the perfect combination of firearm and optic.

“One of the benefits to our American manufacturing facility is our ability to create special edition riflescopes for partners like the Montana Rifle Company through the Leupold Custom Shop,” said Rob Morrison, vice president of marketing for Leupold & Stevens, Inc. “Pairing a premium riflescope like the VX-6 with one of the premier rifle makers in the country results in a truly special opportunity for the American hunter.”

For more information on the Cascade Extreme Rifle Package, or any other rifle MRC makes, visit their website at www.montanarifleco.com. Click here to find a dealer near you.

About the Montana Rifle Company:

Montana Rifle Company (MRC) was founded by gunsmith and barrel manufacturer Keith Sipe in 1999. What originally started as a business specializing in gunsmithing firearms for avid sportsmen soon became a barrel manufacturer known for its quality hand-made barrels. The business continued to grow incorporating custom hunting gun builds and Mauser type actions. Today, MRC is proud to have created a line of economically produced production rifles with a superior controlled round feed action. www.montanarifleco.com

About Leupold & Stevens, Inc.

Founded in Oregon more than a century ago, Leupold & Stevens, Inc. is a fifth generation, family owned company that designs, machines and assembles its riflescopes, mounting systems and tactical/Gold Ring spotting scopes in the USA. The product lines include rifle, handgun and spotting scopes; binoculars; rangefinders; mounting systems; and optical tools and accessories. For more information, please visit www.leupold.com.

“The three-position wing safety also serves as a firing pin block safety, offering an additional safeguard when working through rough country.” -deal breaker. Best factory trigger I ever pulled was on a model 70 winchester but that safety is rubbish.

Anyone else here that has totally given up reading about some of these rifles that you automatically know are out of the price range of the average TTAG reader?

Unless I’m living in an underpaid atmosphere, there’s no way a Cabot 1911 or any firearm in the $3000-up range is coming home with me.
Maybe if I didn’t have a wife, kids, house, life…. maybe…

Not saying it wouldn’t be a nice rifle package, I’m sure it would, and one day when I’m rich and famous I can use it on a big game hunt. Nice as it is, I bet my Ruger will pull in just as many white tails.

“the X2 stock has been enhanced with Kevlar resins for extreme strength.”

This is pure nonsense. Kevlar (Poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide) is a subclass of aramids (ARomatic polyAMIDes). They are a FIBER, not a resin. In composite materials you generally have a fiber that is surrounded by some sort of matrix (usually a resin/epoxy of some sort). If this is from the manufacturer’s official press release that’s pretty lazy. Even if its just a mistake from some PR guy who doesn’t know any better, that sort of thing shouldn’t make it out the door.

Muzzle brakes truly are the works of Satan on your ears – even when you’re wearing earplugs. There’s plenty of conduction of sound into your inner ears through the bones in your skull – your mastoid process, your forehead, etc couple a sound like a rifle muzzle blast into your inner ears just fine. And, let’s remember, ear pro can only reduce the amount of sound that makes it into your ears. So if you have a rifle that’s already pushing a high pressure round (eg, the .300 WinMag easily qualifies as such), you’re going to jump up your SPL at your ears from somewhere in the 155 to 158 dB range to 165+ dB. Some testing indicates that the duration of the high pressure wave also extends when using a muzzle brake.

I’m going to keep preaching against muzzle brakes. It is too late to save my hearing – every day I wake up hearing the same soundtrack as Quasimodo. But if I can convince other people to forego damaging their hearing with crap “solutions” to recoil like muzzle brakes, it will have been worth it to be able to talk from experience.

The old rule (oh, prior to 1974-5 or such) was “40% of the showing barrel length.” This meant that for the barrel forward of the front ring of the receiver, you wanted the forearm forward of the front ring to be 40% of the length of the barrel.

Then as time went on, forearms got a bit shorter. Now, eh, a forearm should be probably about 38% of the showing length of the barrel forward of the front ring.

When you do one of two things to a rifle, things start looking really weird:

1. Make the barrel longer than 22 to 24″ on a sporting rifle,
2. making the forearm too short (or thin, esp. with a heavier barrel),
3. Making the “cylinder” are on a barrel longer than the length of the front ring. The cylinder area on a sporting barrel is the part of the barrel just forward of the front ring, and it is typically 1.1 to 1.220″ in diameter.

Now, if you want to see rifles that look “weird” according to these modern rubrics, then look no further than some custom Mausers (made by Mauser) in the interwar years (1925 to 1939). Some of the heavier rifles for African game would have a cylinder upwards of 3″ long, which looks really goofy, and then they’d have a 26″+ barrel. Taken together, from a modern perspective, these rifles are aesthetic disasters.

Today’s perspective on what makes a bolt action sporting rifle “look correct” owes much to custom riflemakers such as Jerry Fisher,

The old rule (oh, prior to 1974-5 or such) was “40% of the showing barrel length.” This meant that for the barrel forward of the front ring of the receiver, you wanted the forearm forward of the front ring to be 40% of the length of the barrel.

Then as time went on, forearms got a bit shorter. Now, eh, a forearm should be probably about 38% of the showing length of the barrel forward of the front ring. There’s a “golden ratio” thing going on today in forearm lengths, and one of the reasons why that barrel/foreend combo above looks really weird is that they’re really violating that “golden ratio” rule that “looks right” to the human eye.

In general, when you do one of three things to a rifle, things start looking really weird:

1. Make the barrel longer (or appear longer) than 22 to 24″ on a sporting rifle. This rifle appears to suffer from a very long brake on the end of a 24″ (or longer) barrel.
2. Make the forearm too short (or thin, esp. with a heavier barrel),
3. Make the “cylinder” are on a barrel longer than the length of the front ring. The cylinder area on a sporting barrel is the part of the barrel just forward of the front ring, and it is typically 1.1 to 1.220″ in diameter. Now, if you want to see rifles that look “weird” according to these modern rubrics, then look no further than some custom Mausers (made by Mauser) in the interwar years (1925 to 1939). You can find pictures of some of these custom rifles in books on custom rifles and riflemakers. Some of the heavier Mauser sporting rifles for African game would have a cylinder upwards of 3″ long, which looks really goofy, and then they’d have a 26″+ barrel. Taken together, from a modern perspective, these rifles are aesthetic disasters.

Today’s perspective on what makes a bolt action sporting rifle “look correct” to Americans owes much to custom riflemakers such as Jerry Fisher and other members of the ACGG. Mr. Fisher’s rifles have a slim, elegant line to them, with shorter (22″) barrels, nicely shaped foreends and buttstocks that have very clean, elegant line flow to them.

European bolt guns will have different lines and features. eg, Americans have little use, in general, for Schabel foreend tips – that’s a Germanic thing, as is the deep-relief engraving that they use on their metalwork. One practical feature on European rifles will be the “hogback” buttstock, which looks positively demented to most Americans, but which is nothing more or less than the Monte Carlo idea, done perhaps a bit more elegantly. The idea is to keep your head supported to the sight line for a scope, and drop the butt of the stock, allowing the recoil to force the rifle to rotate upwards around your shoulder, putting some of the recoil energy into making a 9+ pound rifle rise into the air, rather than just shoving all that recoil back into your shoulder. But overall, today’s European-made rifles will display a similar recognition of proportions that “look right” at a glance.

I really like the look of the humpback stocks on the European rifles. Like the CZ 550 magnum lines.
And the Schnabel for Ends? Beautiful touches.
Mannlicher stocks? Even better to show that beautiful harmony between a great bluing job and fine wood.